hello everyone!
i have been practicing on making swords recently, and it took me quite a while to get the hang of it. so i decided to make a tutorial on how to shade a sword for those who are interested. I hope you guys find it usefull and it wont take as long to learn as it did for me

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26870341/bas%27s%20sword%20shading%20tutorial.png (Unsupported image host)
save the image to get a better view on the details.  

Nice Tutorial  

You should try following some shading and AA tutorials. The sword's colors are too harsh, and the shading makes no sense. I gave it a go, and this is what I ended up with.

 

Posted by Kondie

You should try following some shading and AA tutorials. The sword's colors are too harsh, and the shading makes no sense. I gave it a go, and this is what I ended up with.

I looked up alot of tutorials, trust me, but that is just the way i like to shade my blades. And the reason why the colors are too harsh is that i normally dont use a pallet but its usefull if you want to explain it (:  

The sword looks visually appealing, but no sword looks like that O_o that texture looks more like a granite counter top than a sword. Kondie's looks good, but the middle line should be the lightest part of the blade. The handle guard looks nice though. The highlights on the blade could be darker too.

Don't take my feedback personally, I'm only trying to help
(Some people take feedback personally, and the last thing I want is that someone is upset with me)  

The blade just looks like one of the swords of Delteria iPhone.  

I think the problem with many aspiring artists on Graal is that they don't step back and learn the core skill involved with the development of their interest. For example it's not in your best interest to google for "how to shade a sword" tutorials and copy whatever result you may find. Your best interest is to go all the way back to the basics and actually learn how to shade. Basic art knowledge from lineart to shading to form, volume and all that good stuff will apply to everything.

Now, pixel art is a special little niche of graphics and sometimes you have to break rules... but that's no different than any stylized form of art from say, cartoons to say, watercolor. But there's something very important you need to take into consideration: before you break anything you need to understand what you're breaking. When you sit down and pixel a sword and you start tossing in highlights and stuff, sometimes general knowledge of shading just isn't applicable. Sometimes you need to say "**** it, it's not going to look good even if it's proper," and you NEED to toss logic and knowledge out the window and improvise the highlights and do your own thing... but unless you know HOW you're stepping off the proper path then you're doing it wrong.

So my suggestion? If you really want to improve grab a piece of paper and pencil and improve your knowledge of art as a whole. It will reflect all other genres of art, including pixel art, ten-fold as you improve. There's a reason that if you visit any great pixel artists site/portfolio they are also very skilled in other art mediums.

Now that said, I took a stab at editing your sword. I don't have the time to do a step-by-step, and given what I said above I might come off as a bit of a hypocrite... but regardless sometimes it's helpful to see how others would do it.



Now first I did some very minor editing of your line. I rounded the tip of the sword off a bit, for example, and also made the handle a bit skinner as I thought it was too thick. Then I added some base colors; you can already see I defined a light source here.

Now for the highlights I find when working with metals it's best to use a few buffer shades to really smooth it out. I determined the light source would be upper-left here so I increase the brightness of the highlight as it nears that.

For the shadow I practically do the exact same thing, but darkening it. This gives a very nice contrast, and contrast is very important for shading metal: high contrast gives the impression of a very reflective surface.

Lastly for the blade I throw in a very subtle wavy highlight over the flat portion of the blade. This is purely to kind of get rid of a boring, flat area. Going with what I said above this isn't a very logically direction, but I know enough to bend the rules and to know what will work and what won't.

As for the hilt it's a bit much to explain. I start defining shapes(using your original as a base) with a dark shade. I increasingly use darker shades to emphasize these shapes and again, to start creating contrast. Remember pieces like the handles should be treated as their appropriate shape; a cylinder in this case. That means ideally opposite side of the handle should be darkened while the near-center would be highlighted(in the case of this light source).

The next step I just start adding highlights, and again I take the white from the blade and put it where the shapes would reflect the most light. Reiterating again the importance of contrast. Then I start cleaning up some areas, adding some AA here and there, fixing up stuff.

Now it may seem like I kind of glazed over the last part with the hilt and all... and I did. Why? Because again these are things that make a lot more sense when you understand proper lighting, volumes and such. I shouldn't need to explain why I placed a highlight here, and a shadow here... pixel tutorials should focus on the techniques of pixel art that are specialized and you can't learn by studying general art. So ya, sorry for the TL;DR

Check out sites like: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm  

Posted by Aeroniel

The blade just looks like one of the swords of Delteria iPhone.

i work there .__.  

Posted by Dusty

I think the problem with many aspiring artists on Graal is that they don't step back and learn the core skill involved with the development of their interest. For example it's not in your best interest to google for "how to shade a sword" tutorials and copy whatever result you may find. Your best interest is to go all the way back to the basics and actually learn how to shade. Basic art knowledge from lineart to shading to form, volume and all that good stuff will apply to everything.

Now, pixel art is a special little niche of graphics and sometimes you have to break rules... but that's no different than any stylized form of art from say, cartoons to say, watercolor. But there's something very important you need to take into consideration: before you break anything you need to understand what you're breaking. When you sit down and pixel a sword and you start tossing in highlights and stuff, sometimes general knowledge of shading just isn't applicable. Sometimes you need to say "**** it, it's not going to look good even if it's proper," and you NEED to toss logic and knowledge out the window and improvise the highlights and do your own thing... but unless you know HOW you're stepping off the proper path then you're doing it wrong.

So my suggestion? If you really want to improve grab a piece of paper and pencil and improve your knowledge of art as a whole. It will reflect all other genres of art, including pixel art, ten-fold as you improve. There's a reason that if you visit any great pixel artists site/portfolio they are also very skilled in other art mediums.

Now that said, I took a stab at editing your sword. I don't have the time to do a step-by-step, and given what I said above I might come off as a bit of a hypocrite... but regardless sometimes it's helpful to see how others would do it.



Now first I did some very minor editing of your line. I rounded the tip of the sword off a bit, for example, and also made the handle a bit skinner as I thought it was too thick. Then I added some base colors; you can already see I defined a light source here.

Now for the highlights I find when working with metals it's best to use a few buffer shades to really smooth it out. I determined the light source would be upper-left here so I increase the brightness of the highlight as it nears that.

For the shadow I practically do the exact same thing, but darkening it. This gives a very nice contrast, and contrast is very important for shading metal: high contrast gives the impression of a very reflective surface.

Lastly for the blade I throw in a very subtle wavy highlight over the flat portion of the blade. This is purely to kind of get rid of a boring, flat area. Going with what I said above this isn't a very logically direction, but I know enough to bend the rules and to know what will work and what won't.

As for the hilt it's a bit much to explain. I start defining shapes(using your original as a base) with a dark shade. I increasingly use darker shades to emphasize these shapes and again, to start creating contrast. Remember pieces like the handles should be treated as their appropriate shape; a cylinder in this case. That means ideally opposite side of the handle should be darkened while the near-center would be highlighted(in the case of this light source).

The next step I just start adding highlights, and again I take the white from the blade and put it where the shapes would reflect the most light. Reiterating again the importance of contrast. Then I start cleaning up some areas, adding some AA here and there, fixing up stuff.

Now it may seem like I kind of glazed over the last part with the hilt and all... and I did. Why? Because again these are things that make a lot more sense when you understand proper lighting, volumes and such. I shouldn't need to explain why I placed a highlight here, and a shadow here... pixel tutorials should focus on the techniques of pixel art that are specialized and you can't learn by studying general art. So ya, sorry for the TL;DR

Check out sites like: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm

i know. ill make an other edit of the sword. but in my opinion this is the easiest way to shade a sword. but to understand how to shade the sword you made cant be explained. you need to look at the objects around you and see how they are shaded. thanks for all the information and the link for the site

there: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26870341/sword.png (Unsupported image host)
it doesnt have a logical shading so it isnt really good for the tutorial  

This is very good, it's probably the shortest but yet most helpful Sword tutorial I've seen so far. Lets see how my sword turns out by using this! Great job!  

I know.  

Amazing f**king post Chaotic. Read it all.